Advanced Placement and Initial College Enrollment: Evidence from an Experiment

Abstract

To evaluate how Advanced Placement courses affect college-going, we randomly assigned the offer of enrollment into an AP science course to over 1,800 students in 23 schools that had not previously offered the course. We find no AP course effects on students’ college entrance exam scores (SAT/ACT). As expected, AP course-takers are substantially more likely to take the AP exam than their control group counterparts. At the same time, treatment group students opt out of the exam at very high rates and most do not earn a passing score on the AP exam. Though less precisely estimated, the results also suggest that taking the AP course increases students’ aspirations to attend higher-quality colleges but does not lead to enrollment in such institutions.

College Comes to High School: Participation and Performance in Tennessee’s Innovative Wave of Dual-Credit Courses

“…Our results also underscore the complexities of policies that aim to accelerate students who are academically underprepared (e.g., Conger et al, 2020, 2021; Cortes et al, 2015; Hallett & Venegas, 2011; Jacob et al, 2017; Kolluri, 2018; McEachin et al, 2020; Troutman et al, 2018; Warne, 2017). Recent research from Texas found that college faculty concerned about the quality of high school DE courses wanted college credit to be tied to performance on a standardized final exam (Troutman et al, 2018).…”

“…Early exposure to advanced content that results in poor course performance may deter students from further study in related fields, working against the state’s goal to nudge students into high-demand occupations (Avery et al, 2018; Stinebrickner & Stinebrickner, 2013). On the other hand, students in the AP study also improved their science skills more than peers assigned to a non-AP class (Conger et al, 2020); and 11th-grade students in SDC College Algebra increased their enrollment (and success) in 12th-grade AP math courses, despite the low pass rates on this exam (Hemelt et al, 2020). Taken together, these findings crystalize the uncertainty that remains regarding the optimal components of high school dual-credit initiatives.…”

“…Students are also more likely to major in fields of study in which they earned AP credit (Avery et al, 2018). By contrast, in a recent study of AP science courses implemented in under-resourced schools where students overwhelmingly failed the exams, AP students lost confidence and ultimately decreased the selectivity of their college enrollments, despite improving their science skills more than those randomly assigned to non-AP science (Conger et al, 2020, 2021)…”

“…Despite these theorized benefits, research on the effects of college-level course-taking during high school on transitions to college is mixed. For AP, recent studies show limited evidence of a positive effect of AP participation on postsecondary enrollment or attainment (Conger et al, 2020(Conger et al, , 2021Geiser & Santelices, 2004;Jackson, 2010;Kolluri, 2018;Shaw et al, 2013;Speroni, 2011a;Warne, 2017). This may be because most AP students are high-achieving, and thus comparable nonparticipants have similarly high likelihoods of completing college (Smith et al, 2017).…”

“…Our study shows that this could substantially limit credit attainment and raises questions about how to align such tests and courses to postsecondary standards that may vary across institutions and sectors of higher education. This highlights a need for more insight into implementation activities that support learning and success in college-level high school courses (Duncheon & Relles, 2020;Long et al, 2019;Miller et al, 2018)-as well as potential benefits and harms to students who take advanced courses but perform poorly in them (Alaie, 2011;Conger et al, 2020Conger et al, , 2021Hallett & Venegas, 2011).…”